According to the FBI, Internet scams cost victims more than $1.4 billion in 2017. Among the most popular types of fraud:

Email phishing scams

Credit card scams

Bank loan scams

Lottery fee scams

Online dating scams

“Nigerian Prince” scams

But you can protect yourself. Here’s how to spot the warning signs of fraud.

Addressed Generally:“Attention!” “Dear Friend,” “Attention the owner of this email,” “Hello, Dear.” Your nameis not mentioned, because this email has been mass-mailed to thousands of intended victims.

Unsolicited: You’re told that you’ve won a lottery you never entered, or have inherited a fortune from someone you never knew existed.

Appeals to Religion:“Hello Beloved in the Lord” or “Yours in Christ” seeks to create a bond with those who deeply believe in God.

Misuse of English:Mis-spellings and faulty grammar usually denote someone—probably a foreigner—using English as a second language. Examples: Run-on sentences; “you’re” for “your”; “except” instead of “accept”; “Dear Beneficial” instead of “Dear Beneficiary.”

Appeals to Sympathy:“My husband just died” or “I am dying of cancer.” This is to make you feel sorry for the sender and lower your guard as an intended victim.

Use of Important Titles/Organizations:“Director,” ‘Barrister,” “Secretary General of the United Nations,” “Police Inspector.” This is to impress recipients and convince them that the email comes from a trusted and legitimate organization.

Claims of Deposit:“We have deposited the check of your fund to your account” is a typical line to instantly grab your attention. Someone you’ve never heard of claims he has just put a huge amount of money into an account you know nothing about. Nor can you access it unless you first pay a “contact fee.”

The “Bank” is in Africa:Unless you know you have relatives there, this should be a dead giveaway to a scam. Africa is a continent kept alive by the charity of other nations. It’s not in the business of doling out large sums of money to Westerners.

Overseas Phone Numbers:If you call these, you’ll have a huge bill. So many people skip calling and just send the money “required” to receive their “cash prize.”

Highly Personal Requests:Asking you—someone they’ve never met—to assume the burden of acting as the executor of their “Last Will and Testament.”

Love Scams: The scammer poses as a man or woman—usually outside the United States—seeking love. A series of emails flows back and forth for days/weeks, until the scammer says s/he will be glad to fly to the United States to be yours. All you have to do is put up the money for the flight cost.

“Make Money From Home”:With most employers refusing to hire, “work from home” scams promise a way to support yourself and your family. You’re required to provide bank information or pay an up-front “registration fee.” Then you wait for job orders—that never come.

Debt Relief: Scammers promise to relieve most or all of your debt—for a large up-front fee. You pay the fee—and are not only out ofthatmoney but still in debt.

Home Repair Schemes:Huge down payments are required for home repairs that never happen.

“Free” Trial Offers:The service or product is free for awhile, but you must opt out later to avoid monthly billings.

The Email Claims to Be From the FBI:Often the “address” includes “Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crime Division.” One such email was addressed: “Dear Beneficiary” and offered help in obtaining a “fund.” The FBI is an investigative agency responsible to the U.S. Department of Justice.It doesnotresolve financial disputes or secure monies for “deserving” recipients. If the FBI wants to contact you, it will do so by letter or by sending agents to your address. The FBI’s own website states: “At this time we do not have a national e-mail address for sending or forwarding investigative information.”

“I Need Help”:You get an email claiming to be from someone you know—who’s “in jail here in Mexico” or some other foreign country. S/he begs you to send money for bail or bribes to win his/her freedom. If you get such an email, call the person to make certain. Don’t rush to send money—chances are it will go directly to a scammer.

FBI Headquarters

There are several commonsense rules to follow in protecting yourself from online scammers:

Don’t trust people you’ve never met to want to give you money.

Shop online only with well-known merchants who have a good reputation.

Don’t click on unknown links—especially those in emails from unknown senders.

If you’re required to pay an advance fee—“on faith”—to receive a big amount of money, the odds are it’s a scam.

If you can’t find any solid information on a company, chances are it doesn’t exist.

Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern politics, warns in his masterwork, The Discourses:

All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.

If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.

Where the crimes of corporate employers are concerned, Americans need not wait for their evil disposition to reveal itself. It has been fully revealed for decades.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Increased media attention to “income inequality” has led some Democratic lawmakers to press for a long-overdue reform: Raising the stock threshold to 50%, making it harder for firms to abandon their country.

Yet a more comprehensive reform package would include legislation that mandates:

American companies that move their headquarters abroad would be officially declared “agents of a foreign power engaged in hostile activity against the United States.”

Those “foreign-owned” companies would be forbidden to sell products within the United States.

Their assets would be subject to seizure by the Internal Revenue Service.

The citizenship of those Americans engaged in such activity would be revoked and they would be ordered to leave the United States or face criminal prosecution for treason—and face trial for this if they returned.

Public Campaign is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to eliminating special interest money in American politics by securing publicly-funded elections at local, state and federal levels.

According to Public Campaign: “Twenty-five profitable Fortune 500 companies, some with a history of tax dodging, spent more on lobbying than they paid in federal taxes between 2008 and 2012….

“Over the past five years, these 25 corporations generated nearly $170 billion in combined profits and received $8.7 billion in tax rebates while paying their lobbyists over half a billion ($543 million), an average of nearly $300,000 a day.

“Based on newly released data by Citizens for Tax Justice, these 25 companies actually received tax refunds over all those five years.

“So most individual American families and small businesses have bigger tax bills than these corporate giants. Unfortunately, most American families and businesses do not have the lobbying operation and access these 25 companies enjoy.”

Several companies on this list are well-known—and spend millions of dollars on self-glorifying ads every year to convince consumers how wonderful they are. Among these:

General Electric

PG&E Corp

Verizon Communications

Boeing

Consolidated Edison

MetroPCS Communications

Republicans—and some Democrats—have tirelessly defended the greed of the richest and most privileged in America. For example, they have dubbed the estate tax—which affects only a tiny, rich minority—“the death tax.”

This makes it appear to affect everyone. So millions of poor and middle-class Americans who will never have to pay a cent in estate taxes vigorously oppose it.

It’s time to recognize that a country can be sold out for other than political reasons. It can be sold out for economic ones, too.

Trea$on

The United States desperately needs a new definition of treason—one that takes into account the following:

Employers who set up offshore accounts to claim their American companies are foreign-owned—and thus exempt from taxes—are traitors.

Employers who enrich themselves by firing American workers and moving their plants to other countries—are traitors.

For thousands of years, otherwise highly intelligent men and women believed that kings ruled by divine right. That kings held absolute power, levied extortionate taxes and sent countless millions of men off to war—all because God wanted it that way.

That lunacy was dealt a deadly blow in 1776 when American Revolutionaries threw off the despotic rule of King George III of England.

But today, millions of Americans remain imprisoned by an equally outrageous and dangerous theory: The Theory of the Divine Right of Employers.

America can no longer afford such a dangerous fallacy as the Theory of the Divine Right of Employers.

The solution lies in remembering that the powerful never voluntarily surrender their privileges. Americans did not win their freedom from Great Britain—and its enslaving doctrine of the “divine right of kings”—by begging for their rights.

Americans will not win their freedom from their corporate masters—and the equally enslaving doctrine of “the divine right of employers”—by begging for the right to work and support themselves and their families.

And they will most certainly never win such freedom by supporting Right-wing political candidates whose first and only allegiance is to the corporate interests who bankroll their campaigns.

Corporations can—and do—spend millions of dollars on TV ads, selling lies—such as if the wealthy are forced to pay their fair share of taxes, jobs will inevitably disappear.

But Americans can choose to reject those lies—and demand that employers behave like patriots instead of predators.

The British offered Revolutionary War General Benedict Arnold £20,000 for betraying West Point to the Crown.

Benedict Arnold

But Arnold was a piker compared to companies that are raking in literally billions of untaxed dollars by betraying the United States in its time of economic trial.

To avoid paying their legitimate share of taxes, they move their headquarters overseas to countries with reduced tax rates. In tax parlance, this is called an “inversion.”

For almost 20 years, tax-avoiding corporations fled to Caribbean countries such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But in 2004, Congress ruled that American companies could relocate overseas if foreign shareholders owned 20% of their stock.

According to statistics compiled by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in 2014:

“Forty-seven U.S. corporations have reincorporated overseas through corporate inversions in the last 10 years, far more than during the previous 20 years combined.

“In total, 75 U.S. corporations have inverted since 1994 – with one other inversion occurring in 1983. What’s more, there are a dozen prospective inversion deals involving U.S. corporations looking to reincorporate overseas, according to CRS

“The new data underscores the significant increase in the number of U.S. corporations that have or are seeking to lower their U.S. taxes by reincorporating overseas.

“It also adds urgency to a legislative solution. Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin in May introduced legislation that would tighten rules to limit inversions.

“The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the legislation would save $19.5 billion over 10 years. Companion legislation was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Carl Levin.

“‘Barely a week seems to pass without news that another corporation plans to move its address overseas simply to avoid paying its fair share of U.S. taxes,’” said Ranking Member Levin.

“These corporate inversions are costing the U.S. billions of dollars and undermining vital domestic interests.

“‘We can and should address this problem immediately through legislation to tighten rules to limit the ability of corporations to simply change their address and ship U.S. tax dollars overseas.’”

Among those companies that have chosen to betray their country in its time of economic need:

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 4,090 other followers

TIP OF THE WEEK

When making complaints in writing, carefully review your email or letter before sending it. Remove any words that are vulgar or profane. Don't make sweeping accusations: "Your agency is a waste."

Don't attribute motives to people you've had problems with, such as: "The postal clerk refused to help me because he's a drunk." If the person actually appeared to be drunk, then be precise in your description: "As he leaned over the counter I could smell beer on his breath. Behind him, in a waste basket, I saw an empty bottle of Coors beer."

Show how the failure of the official to address your problem reflects badly on the company or agency: "This is not the level of service your ads would lead potential customers to expect."

If necessary, note any regulatory agencies that can make life rough for the company or agency if your complaint isn't resolved. For the phone company, for example, cite the FCC or the PUC. But do this only after you have stated you hope your complaint can be settled amicably and privately within the company.